New Delhi: The threat to the Constitution and reservations granted to marginalised Hindu communities dominated the opposition’s counter-narrative against the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. These issues are also dominating the post-result review in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP combine could win only 36 out of 80 seats.
While the BJP is still assessing its performance, two out of its four allies in the state have spoken. They pointed out the narrative, around the Constitution and reservations, spread by the opposition, as the main reason for National Democratic Alliance’s defeat.
On July 2, speaking in Lucknow on the birth anniversary of her father, the late Soneylal Patel, Union minister Anupriya Patel said that her party, Apna Dal (Soneylal) lost one of the two seats it contested because of the “lies, rumours and confusion spread by the opposition” about the threat to the Constitution and reservations. “There were some shortcomings that we lost our second seat. Behind this was a big reason,” said Patel, referring to the controversy surrounding reservations.
Anupriya was the only candidate who won from Apna Dal(S), which she runs along with her husband Ashish Patel. She was elected from Mirzapur for the third time. But the party lost in adjoining Sonbhadra (Robertsganj constituency). The AD(S) is receives support from Kurmis, an agrarian dominant backward caste.
While accusing the opposition parties of misleading “one section of the marginalised classes” on the issue of reservations, Anupriya, while addressing the gathering, wondered aloud why the NDA’s opponents were able to convince the voters.
According to her, the Modi government took some “historic” decisions in the interest of the OBCs: providing constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes, rolling back the 200-point roster system for reservation in faculty recruitment in universities and colleges, and introducing reservation for OBC students in Sainik Schools.
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Patel said that despite all these decisions, the continuing unrest among the OBCs and Dalits over the anomalies in reservations in the appointment of 69,000 assistant teachers in UP, a matter still in court, may have gone against the ruling alliance.
Interestingly, on June 27, Patel caused a bit of unease for the BJP as she shot off a letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath alleging that candidates from the OBC and SC/ST communities were being rejected for state government posts in interviews for various competitive examinations by declaring them as “not found suitable.” Later, these posts, reserved for OBCs, Dalits and tribals, are declared unreserved and opened to the general category, she said, asking him to intervene in the matter.
Whether it was Patel genuinely flagging an issue in the interest of her community or trying to bargain ahead of the upcoming by-polls in the state, reservations have once again become a talking point in UP’s politics.
Taking cue from her, her colleague in the NDA and fellow-OBC leader, Sanjay Nishad too reminded the BJP of its unkept promise of providing SC reservation to various Nishad communities. Nishad asked the BJP to draw its attention to the issue of Nishad reservations, which he claimed was an important factor in the BJP losing support in the recently-concluded election.
“It should be a priority of the government to end the anomalies regarding the reservation,” said Nishad. In the elections held in 2019 (LS) and 2022 (Assembly), the Nishad community voted for the BJP with much fervour but in 2024, they displayed “apathy”, he said.
“Many Nishads did not vote due to the reservation issue,” Nishad told journalists in Gorakhpur. He said that the Congress, Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had all suffered losses due their failure to handle the Nishad issue over time. BJP might meet the same fate, Nishad hinted. “If the issue of reservation is not tackled properly…we also suffered losses, you must have seen this time,” he added.
Nishad has long demanded that riverine OBC castes be included in the SC category. He argues that Nishad and allied castes were sub-castes of the Majhwar and Turaiha castes, which are in the state’s SC list. In December 2021, Union home minister Amit Shah at a rally in Lucknow, hosted by Nishad, promised that if the BJP returned to power in 2022 it would fulfil all agendas of the Nishad Party, prime among them being the Nishad reservation.
Nishad further argued that if the SP could win 37 seats based on a “fear-mongering” campaign about the Constitution and reservations, one could only imagine the impact it would have had on communities who were being deprived of their reservations despite voting for the incumbent in successive elections. His son Praveen Nishad, who contested from Sant Kabir Nagar on a BJP ticket, lost the election.
